RACE IN 19th CENTURY FRANCE - GLOBAL RACE Seminar

Carole REYNAUD-PALIGOT (Université Paris 1), "On the racialization of collective identities in the 19th and 20th century"

This presentation explores some of the racialization processes that affected collective identities in the 1850-1940 period among major Western powers. An actual racial culture, stemming specifically from the scientific field, structured collective imaginaries and helped fuel the national identities of these rival nation-states, while also legitimating their colonial policies.

Claude-Olivier DORON (Université Paris Diderot), "Race and liberalism in early 19th century France: the case of the Censeur Européen"

This presentation explores the understudied role of French liberals from the Censeur européen between 1817 and 1826 in introducing the issue of human races within moral and political sciences. Through their thinking, race became a central object/subject of the political arena, used to interpret both the sense of history and the destiny of societies. This talk provides an opportunity to reflect on the close relationships between a certain kind of liberalism and the race question. It shows that race was not limited to a mere "negative" issue, related to exclusion or domination. While the issue of race was for these people central in explaining inequalities of development across societies and unequal abilities to attain freedom, it was also seen as a flag to unite different struggles and provide dominated peoples with an identity, a memory and an embodied history. This presentation sheds lights on the significance and ambivalence of the race question during the liberal moment of the Bourbon Restoration.